The perp' ID dilemma.

This is a discussion on The perp' ID dilemma. within the Law Enforcement, Military & Homeland Security Discussion forums, part of the Related Topics category; A rider really to my ''good guy - bad guy? thread other day. The problems of making sure who is who etc.
Jeff White a ...

The perp' ID dilemma.

A rider really to my ''good guy - bad guy? thread other day. The problems of making sure who is who etc.

Jeff White a cop and mod on THR posted this below and I feel it is very useful for folks to read for several reasons. Hoping the diagrams will also show - in fact they won't display, sorry but - click on links to see them.

Back in 2005, Public Agency Training Council, a private company that provides training to police agencies did a survey called' Always on - Always Armed through a subsidiary company, the The Legal & Liability Risk Management Institute (LLRMI).

While the purpose of the survey was to identify trends so that future training could be developed, I think that armed citizens may find it useful:

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On January 28th 2000 the Providence Police Department received a call that would irreversibly change the lives of three officers forever. Officer Carlos Saraiva, a three year veteran and Officer Micheal Solitro, a rookie who had completed his field training just days earlier were riding as partners due to a lack of police vehicles.

Officer Saraiva and Solitro monitored a call of two women fighting in the parking lot of Fida's Restaurant. Fida's Restaurant was one of only two restaurants in the City of Providence, a city of nearly 200,000 people, that had and operating license which enabled it to stay open after the hundreds of bars and clubs in the city closed. Due to the scarcity of open restaurants, Fida's regularly drew a diverse bar and club crowd that made it a hot-spot for police activity and crime.

The fight at Fida's had begun inside the restaurant when two females began arguing. One of the females had insulted the other by asking her out on a date, mistakenly believing she was a lesbian. One of the females involved broke a glass and attempted to slash the other woman. A worker in the restaurant began screaming at the females to take it outside.

Once outside, the fight escalated further as the two females were accompanied by their respective companions into the lot of the restaurant. One of the women, Crystal Calder, was joined by her boyfriend, Aldrin Diaz. Out in the lot, Calder shouted to Diaz to get her gun from the car. Meanwhile, Officer Saraiva and Solitro pulled up to the restaurant. Instead of seeing two girls fighting as reported, they observed Diaz pointing a gun at other people in the lot.

The two officers, upon observing the man with the gun, immediately sought cover. Officer Saraiva, who had been driving was immediately exposed to Diaz, whose position in the parking lot was on Saraiva's side. Officer Saraiva jumped from the police vehicle and positioned himself behind two telephone poles that had been strapped together. Officer Solitro, only eight days off field training, got out of the vehicle and moved behind the engine block and wheel of the police car on the passenger side. Both officers, now having cover between them and Diaz, began shouting commands for Diaz to ''DROP THE GUN.'' Diaz complied with the two officers, but dropped the gun into the passenger compartment of a car that he was standing next to. The officers began telling Diaz to get on the ground. When Diaz complied, Officer Solitro, who was positioned behind the police vehicle and off-center to Diaz position between two vehicles, lost sight of him. Officer Solitro then moved over behind the car in which Diaz had dropped the gun in order to maintain visual contact of Diaz.

As the officers continued to take control of Diaz, another man came out of the restaurant and began approaching Diaz, who was prone on the ground. The officers observed that this man had a gun in his hand ant that the gun was pointed toward Diaz. The officers immediately began shouting for this man to drop the gun. The man continued toward Diaz. As he closed in, Officer Saraiva and Officer Solitro each fired two shots. Officer Saraiva's two shots hit the man in the chest and would later be determined to have been fatal sounds. Officer Solitro's first shot went into the car that he was positioned behind. His second shot struck the man in the forehead and was also a fatal shot. Aldrin Diaz, the initial gunmen told detectives later that he felt that the man was about to kill him and he could not believe the officers were allowing this man to close in on him. He recanted this statement after he was charged with felony murder.

As officers began arriving at the scene, one officer, looking at the man on the ground, thought he looked familiar and reported that fact to his supervisor. The supervisor agreed and told him to check the deceased man's pocket for identification. When the officer did, he found Cornel Young Jr.'s police badge and identification in his back pocket. Officer Saraiva and Solitro had mistakenly shot one of their fellow-officers, Cornel Young Jr., the son of the highest ranking African-American police officer in the City of Providence. Officer Young had merely been waiting for a steak sandwich at the take out counter when this fight had started in the restaurant. Tragically, Officer Saraiva and Young were classmates in the police academy, had worked together for three years and were friends.

According to materials on the National Law Enforcement Officer's Memorial web-site, there have been approximately 200 friendly fire deaths in the time period for which statistics have been collected on line of duty deaths.[i] Only 28 have been from mistaken identity, with others occurring from things like cross-fire or training accidents.[ii]

The issues surrounding the death of Cornel Young Jr. are not limited to off-duty officers. In fact several ''Friendly Fire-Mistaken Identity'' cases involve plainclothes and undercover officers who are shot while trying to make an apprehension. An example includes Detective Kely Wilkins, an Oakland California detective who, while on-duty, got involved in a foot pursuit of a subject who had just fled from a stolen vehicle. As uniform officers pulled onto the scene, they observed Wilkins standing over the subject while holding a gun in his hand. The officers got out, shouted toward Wilkins, and when Wilkins turned his head toward the two officers, they opened fire, killing him. In a civil rights claim filed by Detective Wilkins' family, the court denied the shooting officers' motion for qualified immunity after another officer testified that it was clear from Detective Wilkins' actions at the time of the shooting that he was an officer trying to make an arrest.[iii]

During the subsequent lawsuit in the Young some of the focus case centered on an allegation that the Providence Police Department had a policy requiring officers be ''always armed and always on duty.'' The plaintiff's expert witness testified that these policies were antiquated and that Providence was the last metropolitan police department to have such a policy. The expert was obviously wrong.

A recent survey conducted by the Legal and Liability Risk Management Institute determined that nearly thirty percent of the departments in the United States still have an ''always armed/always on duty policy.'' (See figure 1.) Example agencies include: Miami-Dade, Bakersfield, California and the West Virginia State Police to name a few.

FIGURE 1 LLRMI Survey November 2005

Additionally, fifty-percent of police agencies nationwide require officers to take action while off-duty to protect life or property. Over ninety-percent of agencies would expect off-duty officers to take action under some circumstances.

Irrespective of agency policy, the survey clearly leads to the conclusion that the custom and practice of law enforcement throughout the United States is to be always armed and always on duty. Law Enforcement officers have been further encouraged to always be armed by recently enacted federal legislation that allows off-duty and retired law enforcement officers to carry firearms with them throughout the United States.[iv]

Training for Off-Duty Events

Two issues facing law enforcement with respect to off-duty events are whether the agency has conducted any training on off-duty use of force or off-duty confrontations. The Legal and Liability Risk Management Institute's survey of agencies from throughout the United States revealed that the majority of law enforcement agencies throughout the United States are not conducting training on these important issues.

Figure 2 LLRMI Survey Conducted November 2005

Once it is recognized that officers will become involved in police events while off-duty, the question becomes whether or not police agencies have any obligation to train officers with respect to these off-duty incidents. The United States Court of Appeal for the 10th Circuit, in Brown v. Gray,[v] reviewed an off-duty police shooting. An officer involved in a road rage incident chased a man and shot him three times. The officer reported that the man had pointed a gun at him.

At issue in the case was a policy that required officers to be ''always armed and always on duty.'' It should be noted that while only thirty percent of agencies around the country still maintain this policy, many agencies have a custom of off-duty officers being always armed and always on duty. Do policy makers know that their officers carry firearms while off-duty? Do policy makers know that their off-duty officers who witness a crime against a person (for example, a hand-bag snatch from an elderly woman), is likely to take police action. If the answer to these questions is yes, then the agency could be found to have notice of a custom of being always armed and always on duty which has the force of policy.

Although the Denver Police Department had the policy requiring officers to be always armed and always on-duty, the agency did not conduct training on the use of force in the context of off-duty action. A captain from the Denver Police Department testified that the agency chose consciously not to distinguish off-duty from on-duty use of force because the two were identical. A police practices expert testified that the two circumstances were very different and there should have been distinct training for the off-duty circumstance.

How are the two different? One simply has to consider an officer's use of force continuum in these distinct situations. While on-duty an officer has the command presence of his or her uniform; hands-soft and hard; pepper-spray; handcuffs; an impact weapons; bullet-proof vest; available back-up officers and his or her firearm. While off-duty an officer has his or her hands and their firearm. Certainly the use of force issues change.

As the Young case makes clear, an off-duty officer's use of force is not the only consideration to be concerned about. An off-duty or plainclothes officer must recognize the danger of misidentification when they take action. The first trial in the Young lawsuit resulted in a dismissal of all training claims against the Providence Police Department at the close of the plaintiff's case.[vi]

The United States Court of Appeal for the 1st Circuit reviewed the Young case on appeal. The court overturned the decision of the trial judge and returned the case to the trial court for a determination as to whether the Providence Police Department had properly trained its officers on how to identify off-duty officers in an on-duty/off-duty confrontation.[vii] In December of 2005, a jury in the Federal District Court, District of Rhode Island returned a verdict in favor of the Providence Police Department on the training claims after numerous officers and trainers testified as to the types of training conducted with respect to off-duty confrontations.

What Type of Training Should Be Conducted?

First and foremost, agencies must decide as policy matter, whether or not officers are required to be armed while off-duty. Secondly, the agency must decide, what action, if any, an officer is required to take. That said, agencies should recognize that irrespective of agency policy, officers will carry firearms and will take action while off-duty. This leaves only one remaining question: How can agencies best prepare their officers for off-duty/on-duty confrontations. Additionally, agencies should include protocols for plainclothes/uniform officer confrontations.

Agencies should establish protocols that are workable. The New York City Police Department has protocols that encourage on-duty officers to approach armed-suspects from behind and announce ''Police Don't Move.'' This approach would allow a challenged off-duty officers to, without moving, announce that he or she is a police officer. It is unclear whether the policy requires NYPD officers to treat every person with a gun as an off-duty officer until they determine otherwise. Such a protocol may not work in situation as occurred in Young, where he came on the scene in front of the officers after they were already in position.

Training should include scenarios where the officer being trained moves through the scenario as the on-duty officer who must make decisions; as the off-duty officer who must respond to the commands of the on-duty officer; and, as a plainclothes officer. The training should emphasize to the off-duty and plainclothes officer that they may not be recognized by the responding uniformed officer and thus, they must take extra precautions in order to avoid a potential tragedy. These precautions would include:

1. Providing information to responding officers by telephone or radio of the presence of a plainclothes or off-duty officer on the scene as well as descriptive information where possible.

2. Prominently displaying their badge without making a movement that may be perceived as threatening to the responding officers.

3. Immediately following the commands of responding officers.

4. Using caution to ensure that any movements are not perceived as threatening toward the responding officers.

The only way that law enforcement can avoid friendly fire tragedies is through training for all of their officers that will heighten awareness as to the potential for these mistaken identity cases. In all cases the burden falls upon the off-duty or plainclothes officer, otherwise responding officers would have to treat every person with a gun as if he or she were a law enforcement officer until determining otherwise. This is simply not a workable solution to this issue.

Great for thought bud , and on first blush i will re state my personal policy of call on my cell and witness things sort themselves out if me and mine are not directly threatoned , but then this is not real new info for me , just a handy reminder

Also, I second the notion that once the uniformed officers arrive on the scene, you must acknowledge that "the arena is theirs." One simply must comply with the directives of uniformed authorities in such an instance. Compliance equals "no tragedy" in almost every case (nothing is 100%, but that is the way to bet).

For me, it also reinforces something that my instructor suggested in my CC class. If BG surrenders to you after you present your gun, tell him to leave, then call the cops. Couple of reasons why this makes sense:
&#183; you don’t want to be holding a BG at gunpoint when the cops show up. Especially if you’re experiencing the affects of pulling your gun in self-defense (tunnel vision, inability to hear the cops telling you to put down your gun, etc.)
&#183; getting the BG to leave the scene may actually increase your credibility and decrease his. If he wasn’t doing anything wrong, why did he flee the scene?
&#183; I’m not trained to “hold” a BG, frisk him, etc.

I’m sure there may be situations when “holding” BG until the cops show up makes more sense, but as the original post suggests, there is significant added risk.

Great articles.
As for holding a BG at gunpoint, I think I would as long as I had the ability to make a call and insure that I had given the controller my description, specifically asking him/her to radio that description to responding officers.